Tennessee opens as favorite in Citrus Bowl matchup with Iowa

Tennessee landed a spot in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl and will face Iowa out of the Big Ten in Orlando on New Year’s Day. The Vols on Sunday afternoon opened as a 7-point favorite against the Hawkeyes, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, in the top-25 postseason matchup at Camping World Stadium. No. 21 Tennessee will be looking to end its third season under Josh Heupel with its ninth win, while No. 17 Iowa will go for its 11th win after winning the Big Ten’s West Division this season and losing to Michigan in the conference championship game on Saturday.

This will be the fourth all-time meeting between the two programs, who also played in the Peach Bowl in 1982 (Iowa won 28-22) and in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl in 2015 (Tennessee won 45-28), and Tennessee won two of the three previous clashes.

FanDuel opened the total as 36.5 points

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Heupel is just the third Tennessee coach to reach a bowl game in each of his first three seasons, and a second straight postseason trip to Florida will feature a significant clash of styles. Iowa is top-five nationally in total defense and scoring defense, but ranks 133rd out of 133 FBS teams in total offense and averages just 16.6 points per game. Tennessee is 17th nationally in total offense and averages 31.5 points per game, and that’s a down year by Heupel’s lofty standards.

Kirk Ferentz was the head coach when Iowa lost to Tennessee in a bowl game nine years ago and the offensive line coach for the Hawkeyes in the 1980s when they beat the Vols in a bowl game in 1982 and lost a season opener (the Kickoff Classic in East Rutherford, N.J.) to them in 1987, and he could recall more about those two throwback matchups than cite what he knows about Tennessee’s 2023 team when asked about the Vols on a Zoom call on Sunday afternoon.

“We certainly haven’t seen them this year, but I know the work that Josh has done, both obviously at Tennessee and then Central (Florida) before that – just outstanding,” Ferentz said. “We have, coincidentally, we saw Tennessee the last two years against Kentucky. We played Kentucky two straight years (in bowl games), so we do have some familiarity, but certainly weren’t looking at them from a game-planning standpoint.

“The nice thing about playing on January 1st is we’ll have plenty of time to look at them, but I’ll go back to my first experience playing Tennessee was in 1982 in the Peach Bowl. One guy I remember, they had Reggie White. Had Mike Cofer, I believe was his name, outside linebacker. Two pretty good players on defense. I think (Jimmy) Colquitt was their punter. Oh my gosh, the sprinter was the receiver – Willie Gault. OK, I’m sorry. That’s embarrassing I couldn’t pull that name up. Some pretty good players, we had a great game with them.

“You follow them through the years and just a really good program, so it’s going to be a big challenge for us, we know that.”

Iowa split a pair of meetings with Kentucky in its past two bowl games, including the Citrus Bowl two seasons ago.

This will be Tennessee’s sixth all-time appearance in the Citrus Bowl, but the Vols haven’t played in the game since 2002 when they ran roughshod against Michigan in a 45-17 romp – their fourth win in five trips to the game.